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A changing climate affects everyone, but it is the world’s poorest, and those in vulnerable situations, who bear the brunt of environmental, economic and social shocks. This means that the climate crisis intersects with gender issues: women and girls are often the most marginalised members of society, and therefore they often bear the brunt of climate change impacts. 
In this blog, we&#8217;ll unpack why women are viewed as agents of change, who must be part of the solution towards a sustainable future. 
<h2>Climate change is an intersectional issue</h2>
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The climate crisis is not operating in isolation, but is deeply intertwined with social and economic issues. The richest half of the world’s countries emit <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions">86% of global CO2 emissions</a>. In fact, from 1990 to 2015, the richest 1% of the world were responsible for <a href="https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621052/mb-confronting-carbon-inequality-210920-en.pdf">15% of cumulative CO2 emissions</a>. This is more than twice the amount emitted by the<a href="https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621052/mb-confronting-carbon-inequality-210920-en.pdf"> poorest 50%</a> of the world’s population. Despite this, it’s some of the poorest countries who feel the impacts of climate change most severely.
We must address these inequalities as part of our solution to tackling climate change. The climate movement is not only about protecting the planet, it is also about caring for the people who inhabit it and the quality of their lives. 
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<h2>Women are disproportionately affected by climate change </h2>
Women’s increased vulnerability to climate change stems from a number of factors. Around <a href="https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/womenin-shadow-climate-change"> 70% of the 1.3 billion people</a> currently living in conditions of poverty are women. Additionally, although women often manage plots of agricultural land in each family for income or sustenance in developing countries, land titles are usually held by men. This means that, following an environmental disaster, many women cannot independently claim state-offered reconstruction funds. 
Women and girls across the world also tend to bear more responsibility for domestic duties. This means that as resources are depleted, or climate change drives an increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, women and girls take on more work, fetching water, caring for their communities, and dropping out of school to help their families. In 25 sub-Saharan African countries, the combined time women spend collecting water each day is <a href="https://interactive.unwomen.org/multimedia/photo/climatechange/en/index.html">16 million hours</a>; compared to <a href="https://interactive.unwomen.org/multimedia/photo/climatechange/en/index.html">6 million for men</a>. 
The most disadvantaged people are also the most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change, and face greater risks as clean water and sanitation systems become compromised. <a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-how-climate-change-disproportionately-affects-womens-health">An analysis</a> found that women and girls often face disproportionately high health risks from the impacts of climate change compared to men and boys. Those who carry children are also uniquely threatened by climate change’s impact on reproductive and maternal health. Climate change affects this in two main ways: it can raise health risks for expecting mothers and foetuses, and it can limit access to necessary reproductive and maternal health services.

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<h2>Empowering women and girls is fundamental to building a better future</h2>
So often the conversation about this topic ends at acknowledging how women are disproportionately affected by climate change, and doesn’t address how empowering women and girls, and working towards gender equality can help us to tackle the climate crisis. 
We need to avoid painting a picture of women and girls as only victims of climate change, and instead look to them as part of the solution, as farmers, educators, scientists, decision-makers and advocates. 
<h3>Making time for female farmers </h3>
UN evidence indicates that if women had the same access to resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">20-30%</a>, raising total agricultural output in some countries by <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">2.5- 4%</a>. 
Secure access to land is a basic right for farming, however in many places it’s more difficult for women to own land, and when they do it’s often smaller and less fertile plots. <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">Less than 20%</a> of the world’s landholders are women, and women represent fewer than <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">5%</a> of all agricultural landholders in North Africa and West Asia. In sub-Saharan Africa, women do <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i2050e/i2050e.pdf">48.7%</a> of the agricultural labour, but only <a href="http://www.fao.org/3/i2050e/i2050e.pdf">15%</a> of landowners are women. 
Globally women do, on average,<a href="https://interactive.unwomen.org/multimedia/infographic/changingworldofwork/en/index.html"> 2.5 times more </a>unpaid work than men and women and girls are responsible for water collection in <a href="https://www.unwater.org/water-facts/water-and-gender" target="_blank" rel="noopener">8 out of 10 households</a> with water off premises. Solutions to decrease the domestic duties of women and girls can free up their time, allowing female farmers to invest more time in their farms if they chose, helping to reduce the gender gap in agricultural productivity. Solutions can be as simple as providing access to wells, reducing the distance women and girls have to travel to fetch water. 
Project Drawdown estimates that addressing inequality in agriculture could prevent 2 billion tonnes of emissions between now and 2050, and reduce the number of hungry people in the world by <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">12 to 17%</a>. 
<h3>Access to education </h3>
Inequality is not just about money but it’s also about access to opportunities and the ability to make choices. An estimated <a href="https://www.unicef.org/education/girls-education">130 million girls</a> worldwide are still denied the right to an education. Every additional year of primary school increases girls’ eventual wages by <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">10-20%</a>. 
Key strategies to increase access to education for women and girls include making school affordable, helping girls overcome health barriers, reducing the time and distance to get to school, and making schools more girl-orientated. A key solution is to build more local schools. Globally, just <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">39%</a> of rural girls attend secondary school (far fewer than boys at 45%). In Pakistan, a half-kilometre increase in the distance to school will decrease the enrolment of girls by <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/commission-on-the-status-of-women-2012/facts-and-figures">20%.</a> 
<h3>Women as climate leaders </h3>
Globally power is not shared equally between the genders. According to the UN, at  the current rate of progress, <a href="https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/leadership-and-political-participation/facts-and-figures" target="_blank" rel="noopener">gender parity in national legislative bodies will not be achieved before 2063</a>.  This gender gap is found throughout the world, however it is particularly large in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Arab states. 
Why does this matter for fighting climate change? If women are not included in climate decision making, their needs will not be provided for and existing inequalities will deepen. 
If we are to have a meaningful impact on tackling climate change, we need to give women a seat at the table.

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<h2>We need to tackle injustice on all fronts</h2>
It is important to note that the experience of women in climate change is not homogeneous. Even with one country, women’s experiences vary greatly depending on race, class and a multitude of other issues. Those women who are more vulnerable and marginalised in society including women of colour, trans women and poorer women will typically be more affected by climate change.  
At Ecologi we support projects that support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, supporting an average of 5.3 goals per project over 2022. Many of our supported reforestation partners actively bolster our ambitions regarding gender empowerment by providing employment and training to women planters and supplying a sustainable and vital income stream for their work. 
<a href="https://x.ecologi.com">Sign up to Ecologi today</a> to start supporting projects that are helping to improve gender equality.

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UK Voluntary Carbon Market Guide: Best Practices for Climate Action

The voluntary carbon market plays an important role in corporate climate strategies – but its effectiveness relies on buyers doing due diligence and rigorous quality assessment on each project, as well as placing the purchase of credits in the right place in the climate journey.
To ensure meaningful climate impact, businesses must develop a comprehensive carbon strategy and find ways to fund only high-quality credits in the voluntary carbon market – and this guide shows you how to do so with Ecologi.

<h2>Table of contents</h2>
<ul>
<li>When to buy carbon credits</li>
<li>Our new carbon projects assessment framework</li>
<li>Ecologi&#8217;s core due diligence principles</li>
<li>How Ecologi scores and ranks carbon credit projects</li>
<li>Questions to ask your carbon credit supplier</li>
<li>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</li>
</ul>

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<h2>When should businesses buy carbon credits in the voluntary market?</h2>
Businesses must not use credits in place of making direct, measurable reductions in their emissions. Instead, follow these steps to ensure you buy your carbon credits on the right step of your corporate climate action journey, and in the right way:
<ol>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Measure your emissions first – to allow you to understand where your business’s emissions are coming from. 
</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Set science-based targets and work towards them – set ambitious targets aligned with the SBTi and compatible with the global 1.5ºC warming target.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Beyond value chain mitigation (BVCM) – design your BVCM portfolio to work alongside your decarbonisation plan and address your unabated emissions in each reporting year. Align it with SBTi guidance and the Oxford Principles. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Buy high-quality carbon credits – use this guide to ensure the carbon credits you buy meet rigorous quality standards. Remember, under the SBTi framework you’ll also need permanent carbon removal credits for neutralising your residual emissions when you reach your net-zero date.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Disclose and report transparently – publicly disclose information about your carbon credit purchases, and clearly communicate the limited role of carbon credits in your broader sustainability strategy.</li>
</ol>

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<h2>Ecologi&#8217;s carbon project assessment framework</h2>
In April 2025, we published a report summarising how we assess carbon credit projects against our rigorous proprietary rubric. A snapshot of what goes into our carbon credit project assessment is below, or you <a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">download the full whitepaper here</a>.

<h2>Carbon project due diligence: Ecologi’s core principles</h2>
At Ecologi, we maintain general due diligence principles which we apply universally across the voluntary carbon market, to support our efforts to supply only high-quality carbon credits.
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">ICROA-endorsed standards only – we supply credits exclusively from carbon standards which are ICROA-endorsed.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Responsive to ICVCM decisions – we support the ICVCM’s two-tick approach to providing CCP-Approval to project methodologies, and we go further still, to assess individual projects on their merits and limitations as well.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Keep the carbon credit life cycle as short as possible – 75% of our credits in 2024 came directly from project developers and their nominated dispensaries (as opposed to intermediaries on the secondary market), maximising the proportion of purchase price which goes to the developer.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Locally-appropriate projects only – we take care to ensure that supported projects are being applied in appropriate geographies, where they can have the greatest impact.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Deep project-level scrutiny – our extensive assessment criteria are specific to each type of project, and we assess every project against these criteria, ensuring the project’s specifics have been taken into account.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Methodological consensus – we synthesise data we receive from our partners Sylvera, BeZero Carbon, Calyx Global and Renoster) with our own in-house analysis to uncover where there is consensus about project quality, and improve confidence.</li>
</ul>

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<h2>How to evaluate carbon credits: Ecologi&#8217;s scoring methodology</h2>
We designed a three-layer assessment process which takes into account the merits and limitations of the carbon standard used, the carbon credit methodology used, and of the individual project design.
The tables below summarise some of the data inputs we use at each stage.

<h3>Assessment level: Carbon Standard</h3>
Examples: Gold Standard, Verra, Puro Earth, Isometric, Plan Vivo.

<h3>Assessment level: Methodology (or ‘Protocol’)</h3>
Examples: GS TPDDTEC, VM0048, ACM0002.

<h3>Assessment level: Project</h3>
Examples: GS 10790, VCS 1571.

Criteria in the assessment are categorised as either quality criteria or risk criteria, and are segmented by our three pillars of impact: Climate, Nature and People. Based on how it meets each criterion, the project gains points for quality criteria, and loses points for excess risk – ultimately giving a risk-adjusted value out of 100 for each of these pillars.
Having gathered our risk-adjusted pillar scores, we use our own unique scoring formula which weights the risk-adjusted Climate score of the project equally with the combined risk-adjusted Nature and People scores. The formula then produces an ‘overall’ score (also out of 100) for the project. In order to be supplied by Ecologi, projects must meet a minimum overall score of 80, and must achieve no lower than 65 in any given risk-adjusted pillar score.

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<h2>Key questions to ask carbon credit suppliers</h2>
Selecting the right carbon credit provider is important to help guide you to make informed choices as part of your corporate sustainability strategy. Before purchasing carbon credits, businesses should ask:
<h3>Project quality </h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you assess/validate/underwrite project quality? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do your projects get good ratings from the ratings agencies? If so, what ratings are they?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you source credits directly from project developers, or from the secondary market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you monitor projects over time to ensure continued success, and how do you remedy it, if a project&#8217;s quality drops?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Due diligence</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you ensure you are supporting the right projects in the right locations?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you account for project permanence and mitigate risks?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">What makes your projects additional?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you assess the project&#8217;s impacts on climate, nature and people?</li>
</ul>
<h3>Positioning</h3>
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you contribute to the development of a high integrity voluntary carbon market?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you align your portfolios with the Oxford Principles? If so, how?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">How do you reflect ICVCM guidance on carbon credit methodologies and technologies?</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Do you build multi-year portfolios that align to mid- &amp; long-term SBTs?</li>
</ul>
As the voluntary carbon market evolves, corporate buyers have the power and the responsibility to demand high-impact credits to drive real climate progress. This means buyers have a responsibility to do due diligence before placing an order for carbon credits.

<h2>Take action in the voluntary carbon market</h2>
As a business committed to corporate climate action, understanding the voluntary carbon market is essential for making informed decisions about carbon credits. Our comprehensive whitepaper provides deeper insights into creating an effective sustainability strategy.
<a href="https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20250428124112/Ecologi_Whitepaper_A4.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download our full whitepaper</a> to learn how your business can navigate the voluntary carbon market with confidence.

<h2>Connect with one of our climate experts</h2>
Please complete our form to arrange a 30-minute discovery call to discuss your goals and get a tailored solution for your business.

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